


To Forgive Oneself

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [37]
Category: CSI, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They weren’t a couple who could work entirely apart, who could keep home and professional life separate. They'd met because of work; partnership was who they were.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Forgive Oneself

**Title:** To Forgive Oneself  
 **Author:** [](http://vegawriters.livejournal.com/profile)[**vegawriters**](http://vegawriters.livejournal.com/)  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Pairing:** Sara/Grissom  
 **Characters:** Sara Sidle, Gil Grissom  
 **Rating:** Teen  
 **Timeframe:** Post _Risky Business Class_ ; directly follows the events in _[Edge of the Ravine](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/75391.html)_.  
 **A/N:** This is part of the [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/tag/sleeps%20with%20butterflies) series and holds all of the warnings associated with this series.  
 **Disclaimer:** I don’t own, don’t claim to own, although I wish I could have a hand in writing them. Seriously. Please don’t sue me. Hire me instead.

 **Summary:** T _hey weren’t a couple who could work entirely apart, who could keep home and professional life separate. They'd met because of work; partnership was who they were._

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t talked about _it_ already. The “why” was known: scar tissue, age, endometriosis. But for all the awkward silences and half-hearted consolation given across phone conversations, they hadn’t looked into each other’s eyes to talk about it. They hadn’t held each other’s hands while they gave up on a dream so newly in the making. Sara wanted to bring it up, to have that adult conversation they desperately needed to have, but she also didn’t want to ruin the time together. She didn’t want to cry over it. For all her frustration about Gil’s inability to communicate, she often wasn’t much better.

Stepping out into the late afternoon cool, they walked hand-in-hand across the street, past the cathedral she’d taken a picture of her first night in Lima. It was lit again, the yellow reflecting like sand under the moonlight. Dressed for dinner, she was in a black silk wrap skirt with a matching top, and a pair of comfortable sandals. He’d donned jeans and one of the shirts she’d bought for him last Christmas. They walked in comfortable silence all the way to the restaurant. The patio was heated so they opted to sit outside, but even with the heaters blowing, Sara was glad she’d grabbed one of his cardigans off the bed. They made it through a half a glass of wine each before he finally looked at her. “Are you in a lot of pain, honey?”

A sigh escaped her and she took a sip of her wine before tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Yes and no,” she finally answered. “It’s like low grade cramps a lot of the time.”

“What can they do?”

She shrugged. “There’s treatments, new ones all the time. I haven’t really thought about it much, even though I need to deal with it. My doctor thinks the lesions are advanced enough that I’ll probably need surgery though, Gil. Endo can be serious.” She left out the words she knew he was thinking: they’d waited too long. The problem was, once they’d introduced the hope, it had become a dream. Now, they had to go back to how it was before. To their life as a couple, not a life expecting to be a trio. That was as hard to accept as the distance between them. He stared at her and she saw the panic on his face, the fear that he couldn’t fix her. She just reached across the table and took his hand. “It’s endometriosis, not cancer. Not the end of the world. Anyway, it won’t be that long before I hit menopause and I’ll have a whole other set of issues going on.”

“It’s not that, Sara.”

“Then what is it?” She tilted her head at him, confused.

“You’ve been going through this alone while I’m down here.”

She paused and stared at their linked hands. “This distance is the root of a lot of things, Gil, but not this. This one you couldn’t control.” She gave him a soft smile. “There’s a lot of things we need to really talk about, to really find a way to move through. But, let’s not start these conversations with unnecessarily placed blame. If you want to blame someone, blame the guy who raped me when I was fourteen. Blame Dan. Blame me because it’s my body chemistry that’s reacting this way. But don’t blame yourself. Even if we’d gotten married ten years ago, we wouldn’t have been ready to entertain the possibility of children until recently.”

He nodded a bit and she watched his posture change. It was a telltale thing with him, an acceptance that she was right and he needed to give himself a break. She’d seen it a lot before they’d started things up again for what …. The third time? Or the fourth? Back when her depression had hit such a peak, she’d welcomed the unpaid leaves of absence and the near firings. He’d had a lot to forgive himself for back then, not nearly so much now. And, she knew better than to push him about his own forgiveness. The shoulder slump was his way of communicating. “I don’t want to change the plans for the money we set aside, Sara. In fact, I want to keep it up. You need a cushion after I’m gone.”

She stared at him for a minute. For all the reality of actuary tables, she had always imagined going first. Maybe because she couldn’t imagine life without him. But he was closer to the end than the beginning, and the white of his hair and the slight shake of his hand betrayed the encroaching years. He could live another forty years, or he could go in the next ten. Yes, he was right. Yes, she would have her retirement and would receive widow’s benefits and his assets, but they needed to make sure she was set after he was gone. Life was expensive. So she just nodded. “Okay. It’s already part of the budget, we’ll keep it that way.” She didn’t say that if he went before she was ready, she could also use it to cover funeral costs. That conversation had already taken place, their living wills were set, as were the ones establishing the assets. She had no desire to revisit that side of it right now.

The waiter returned and Gil ordered for them (a chauvinistic quirk of his that she secretly enjoyed) and when they were alone again and he’d poured more wine for them, she asked, “How are you feeling about it?” They were both better with facts than feelings, but they couldn’t possibly move on without talking about it and if it meant they spent two weeks dealing with this and not with the rest of their issues, she’d accept it. It was funny. Some people would look at the problems in their marriage and assume they were destined for the end. But they’d been here before, more than once. For them, it was about remembering how to communicate.

For a long moment he was silent. She let him stare at the red wine in the glass in his hand and didn’t push when the silence lasted through the first course appearing in front of them. She picked at a piece of bread. He finally spoke. “I won’t deny I’d started lists of names in my head, Sara. I swore I wouldn’t, but I had.”

She shook her head a bit and didn’t stop the light smile that crossed her face. She’d done it too. “What was your favorite?”

“Lilly, if we had a girl. Warrick if we had a boy.”

Silent for a moment in respect to the memory of their friend, she finally nodded. Of course they’d name a boy Warrick. “I like Jordan for a girl. Or Kira.” How had they not talked about this before? But then again, they were also pretending not to hope.

“Kira is nice.” He paused and she waited. He returned it and took a bite of the bread and cheese in front of them. “I’m sorry, Sara.”

“Me too.” It hung there. Finally she took his bread and cheese and took a bite. “Do you remember Elise’s case?” Again, the words hung between them. Of course he remembered Elise’s case. It was one of the few times he’d recused himself from a case for personal reasons, one of the few times he’d begged her to take time off, to stay away from the lab. She’d acquiesced and slipped down to the morgue only once to stare at the girl who looked more like her than she was comfortable with. Doc Robbins hadn’t even tried to shoo her out, but she’d been able to walk away on her own. Yes, that girl had been her daughter, but she’d never known her. Never held her. And even then, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to touch her. Elise wasn’t hers. Thinking of Elise as hers would only set her off on a downward spiral and she’d finally stopped spinning. He looked at her. She shook her head. “That was when I started thinking about kids. I didn’t want to. And then, when we had that case with the showgirls and one of them had that daughter who had been adopted. It becomes a virus in the brain. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was there. Eating at me.”

“Do you think if you hadn’t gone back to Vegas, things would be different?”

She knew he was talking about their lack of progeny, but there were underlying themes to the question. They’d tackle them one at a time, and not all over dinner. “Yes.” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t mean it was the wrong decision either.” The main course appeared before them and Sara was grateful for silent serving staff. “Gil, I wish that the specifics of this damn project we’ve been trying to figure out were set, and I get that the work you are doing here in Peru is making us look really good to research universities back in the states. I respect that and I know we made the right choice in having me stay in Vegas. There isn’t a place for me at the dig site here and I’d be bored out of my mind. At least in Vegas I have a purpose. Hopefully, we’re going to get our grant and be the partners we are. And, if that doesn’t come to pass, when you retire, I can cut back to consulting, or even retire myself.”

He nodded. “Doesn’t change that we have some problems to work out.”

“And some mourning to accept. It’s just us, Gil. From here on out. And it’s probably a good thing if you think about it.”

“It probably is.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking about something, Sara.”

“Oh?” He shifted nervously and she chuckled. He’d had the same look on his face when he proposed and well, she’d already said yes to that. “Gil, what is it?” Didn’t he realize she’d follow him to the ends of the earth if he asked? The problem was, lately he hadn’t been asking.

“I’ve been thinking it’s time to write a book. I’ve been thinking about starting one, but I have a suspicion that I’ll get lost in the research. My best papers were always the ones written with other people. I need someone to keep me focused. Even though we’re in different countries, we’re still partners, and no one understands my notes like you do.”

If she could have launched herself across the table and into his lap, she would have. Instead, she lifted his fingers to her lips and kissed them gently. “I love you.” She said softly. “And yes.” She smiled. “So is it about the Peruvian dig?”

“I realized the other day there might actually be two books in my notes. One specifically about forensic entomology, and one about the dig.”

“Well,” Sara leaned back in her chair, “let’s look through things and see what we can separate out.” This was what made her feel good. Not just being loved by her husband, but being his partner. They weren’t a couple who could work entirely apart, who could keep home and professional life separate. They'd met because of work; partnership was who they were. And, knowing her husband, he would need someone who understood his shorthand. There were probably three books alone on the dig and really, what she wanted to do, now that she thought about it, was compile his notes on entomology into some kind of biography. Gil Grissom had been a pioneer in his field and his methods needed to be passed on to the next generation. But that was a conversation for later.

“Thank you,” he said softly. And when he said it, she knew it wasn’t just a thank you but an I love you. And she loved him too. She loved how his curls were all white now, and how the beard was a permanent thing. She loved how looked at her through his glasses, peering his blue eyes into her soul, like he had since the first day they’d met. “Sara …” he stared and then trailed off. She waited. “I’m sorry if you felt like there was pressure on you. To conceive.”

“I put it on myself, Gil.” She shrugged. “I wanted to give you a child.”

“I think,” he shook his head, “children are not gifts to be given. We think about them that way, as a society. As these angelic gifts. What they are, is part of us, Sara. So it isn’t that you’d be giving me a child. It’s that we’d be passing on who we are, what we are, where we’ve come from.” He paused in his theorizing and she let him collect his thoughts. For the starkness of his words, she knew what he meant. It wasn’t about the concept of children. It was about the biological and psychological need to procreate. It was about the fact that it didn’t matter how much two people loved each other, sometimes something like children just weren’t in the cards. It didn’t change how much they loved each other and it didn’t mean they were any less real as a couple. “I’m glad that for a little while, I had the gift of the dream.”

“Me too.” She smiled. He took her hand and brought it to his lips. The food was going cold in front of them but she didn’t care. This was more important. This was a huge step. She felt lighter. Better. Like they could really tackle the stuff that was lurking in the shadows – his self-absorbed research obsessions, her workaholic tendencies, and the distance between Vegas and Peru.


End file.
